Primarily a Windows user here (though not really by choice) and I guess I'll bite - what does it matter what people put on the Desktop? Are there any security implications of not keeping it tidy?
The rest of your points I fully agree with, but that one sticks out as weird to me.
Yes, this one I have to admit it is probably some form of OCD on my part. I get nervous when I see windows users using they desktops as /tmp/ ... it looks so disorganized! Then I remember it is really a personal thing... then I remember windows does have "C:\Temp" but whatever you put there is not deleted on the next reboot.
Whatever I do that I know is temporary, will go to /tmp and I know it will be deleted after I reboot. Windows users are not used to this concept and use their desktops as a makeshift /tmp/. They have to delete the files themselves and sometimes just forget it quickly growing to an aberrant state where the desktop is extremely polluted.
It may be some form of OCD with me, but it is very common among windows users and it IS ugly.
> Whatever I do that I know is temporary, will go to /tmp and I know it will be deleted after I reboot.
Only problem with that is that if I remember correctly, on some distributions, the /tmp folder is actually held in-memory. This means that, the more stuff is in there, the more RAM is going to be used up.
There's also /run/user/1000 which is more of a systemd thing, and that's definitely mapped to memory (at least it is on Fedora).
The rest of your points I fully agree with, but that one sticks out as weird to me.